STARS ABOVE Demon Profiles
by BHS
Summary: Written in the style of the Witch cards from the official Japanese Madoka website, here are profiles for the Nine (and their mother, Vittoria), the Demons which appear in STARS ABOVE. This is bonus content for the main story, updated in between chapters. CAUTION: SPOILERS.
1. Serafino, the First

**Serafino, the First  
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The Demon of Limbo, he has an inconsistent nature. Serafino was born from the despair of a noble and virtuous businessman whose life was ruined through no fault of his own. When he lost everything he owned, the man threw himself in front of an oncoming train. He drags his victims into an unusual Lair that seems half-formed, retaining elements of the real world. Serafino's second stage form is massive and wormlike, with three sets of bloodstained fangs, and resembles a hideous corruption of one of Japan's _shinkansen_ bullet trains. Having no eyes, he charges forward blindly and tears apart whatever is in his path.

His Spawn are tiny, maggot-like worms that inch along on latticework train tracks, which appear in front of them and disappear as they pass by. They use these tracks to bind Serafino's victims and feast on their Hearts at their leisure. Interestingly, Serafino prefers not to feed on Hearts directly, unless he is enraged… this may be a small remnant of his humanity.


	2. Geppetto, the Fifth

**Geppetto, the Fifth**

The Demon of Wrath, he has a manipulative nature. He was born from the curse of a man who took sadistic joy in inciting friends to anger. In life, he would carefully twist words and manipulate emotions in order to cause pain and suffering. His second stage is a huge wooden puppet's hand with six fingers, each bearing a carving of a face portraying a different emotion on the fingertips. Puppet strings can emerge from each of the faces' mouths and eyes and attach themselves to his victims, allowing him to control their movements. His Lair is an immense, empty puppet theater where everything is scaled-up to giant size. Once he draws his victims up to the stage with his strings, he can make them move however he wishes… if there is more than one human in his Lair, he will often force them to fight each other to the death. Once he grows bored of this entertainment, he will savagely devour his victims and their Hearts.

Geppetto's Spawn are smaller puppet arms which emerge from the seats in front of the theater's stage, providing an audience for their master. They are forced to applaud for Geppetto's performances, no matter how depraved they may be… otherwise he will crush them without mercy.


	3. Gaspare, the Fourth

**Gaspare, the Fourth**

The Demon of Greed, he has a misanthropic nature. His curse was born from a man who lived in a squalid apartment in an extremely poor neighborhood. The man was a _hikikomori_, an anti-social cynic who refused to give or take any sort of aid, living his entire life alone in his tiny home. Upon his death, it was discovered that the man was actually incredibly wealthy; he obsessively hoarded and hid his money for his entire adult life, and therefore wasted it all. His Lair is a maze of black boulders, rolling in random directions and crashing into each other, making mountains in odd shapes before driving themselves apart again.

Gaspare's second stage takes the form of an enormous knight, with the upper body grotesquely hunched over nearly ninety degrees, as if he were carrying a great weight. The knight has no face and no features at all, his head is merely a vague shape resting upon his shoulders. His entire body, armor included, is made of solid lead, making him the slowest and heaviest of the Nine. Thin veins of gold and silver can be seen connecting each piece of the armor's plating to other pieces. In one hand, Gaspare carries a wicked golden lance, and in the other, a polished silver shield.

The least intelligent of the Nine and closest to a standard Demon, Gaspare never speaks. If he ever did communicate in more than body language, his brethren might be horrified by the extent of his apathy for anyone or anything but himself. Gaspare sees himself as the only living being in the universe, and everything else is merely an object to him. One could argue that in a way he even considers his own existence to be such; he thinks of himself as a genderless "it", for the little that human notions of gender apply to Demons.

Gaspare's Spawn are seldom seen; he eats them immediately whenever he finds them in his Lair. The Spawn are beautiful, bird-like creatures made of precious metals, but when Gaspare consumes them they are turned to worthless lead and incorporated into his armor. He is said to do the same to any humans that wander into his domain.


	4. Ciacco, the Third

**Ciacco, the Third**

The Demon of Gluttony, he has a savage nature. Ciacco was born from the soul of a corrupt politician who gorged himself on expensive food and riches while the people who appointed him starved. The Third was born immediately after the politician was murdered by an angry mob. The most bestial of the Nine in appearance as well as temperament, his second stage is a huge, sickly, emaciated black dog with three mad eyes and a distended stomach. Ciacco's torment is living with eternal starvation; his Spawn live inside his body in the form of maggots, and eat whatever he tries to eat, depriving him of all nourishment. Driven insane by hunger, he relentlessly chases whatever unfortunate victims wander into his Lair until they are too exhausted to resist. Ciacco then devours them without mercy, never realizing that nothing will sate his appetite.

Reflecting his punishment, Ciacco's Lair is an endless garbage dump, filthy and disgusting beyond measure. Everything in it is useless and inedible, soaked through with the dirty sleet that falls constantly from the sky.


	5. Vittoria

[from the recovered files of Elise Robard]

**Vittoria**

The Demon of Mourning. Formerly known as **Sieglinde, Bernice, Vijayendra, Myrtle, Jaya, Nike, Adelvina, Daphne, Fathia, Laura, Nicole, **or any number of variants by region and language, until a consensus was reached by the united Puellae Magi for the sake of easier communication. Also sometimes referred to as **The Great Disaster, The Destroyer, Skybreaker, She Who Sings Requiem, Echidna, Season's End, Mourning Star, Mother of Millions, Golgotha, **etc. in media reports.

Vittoria is the most enormous Demon in recorded history, her main body comparable in size to a football stadium at full strength. Composed of ever-shifting pitch-black matter, the only consistent features she has are twelve white-hot, burning eyes that can appear in any position on the main body. The few eyewitnesses to her presence describe her basic shape as arachnid, with dozens of asymmetrical legs as thick around as tree trunks. At some point, each leg splits in half, then quarters, again and again to form a seemingly infinite number of branching tendrils. Vittoria plunges these tendrils deep into the Earth, growing them constantly ever outward across the world. When one resurfaces in some other country, it savagely attacks everything in sight and immediately begins birthing not Spawn, but full-grown Demons, threatening to overwhelm any force that tries to stop it. Evidence suggests that if left unchecked, these tendrils will grow into copies of Vittoria, each as powerful as her main body in Japan.

Her presence is announced by hideous, mournful screaming, and ferocious blasts of searing plasma from her multiple eyes. Once she has arrived and rooted herself in one location, or fully-formed from one of her tendrils, she sprouts gigantic black talons which begin tearing savagely at the sky. The "wounds" these talons leave behind in the empty air glow bright red, and some even report seeing them shed blood.

Oddly, what is arguably Vittoria's most frightening ability is used exclusively on Puellae Magi. Her "branches" seize the Soul Gem of any girl unfortunate enough to stray too close, and burrow into her flesh. The exact circumstances of what happens next are still a mystery, but when the branch withdraws several seconds later, the victim's Soul Gem is completely empty, still intact but devoid of any magic, color, or traces of its owner's being, little more than a worthless piece of glass. The body of the victim does not "fade" in the usual manner of the Law of Cycles; it is left behind to rot as an empty shell. Rumors circulate that perhaps this is a remnant of Vittoria's human life, that she was so wronged by Puellae Magi that her desire for vengeance was inherited by the Demon born from her despair.

Note: perhaps if we can find some way to r[FURTHER DATA CORRUPTED, RETRIEVAL IMPOSSIBLE]

_Authored and tagged by Elise Robard, former site of Cannes, France,_ _on _[DATE REDACTED], _2012. Retrieved and compiled by Nico Kanna, former site of Asunaro, Japan, on _[DATE REDACTED],_ 2013._


	6. Jovanni, the Sixth

**Jovanni, the Sixth**

The Demon of Heresy, he has a seductive nature. Jovanni was born from the soul of a Christian minister, who preached for tolerance and understanding among his congregation, and then used their trust in him to incite violence against those he viewed as leading "sinful" or "blasphemous" lives. Swiftly escalating from a harmless if outspoken community to a full-fledged cult, the minister and his flock took to burning the homes of those unfortunate civilians who caught their attention and did not live up to their warped ideals. After a while, these acts of arson were committed with said civilians still inside their homes. One such night, the minister was accidentally engulfed in the flames of his own making, and allowed himself to perish rather than extinguish the blaze and possibly let his victims go.

Jovanni is gigantic and immobile in his second stage, taking the form of a warped cathedral built from and furnished with the black igneous rock that composes his arid, volcanic Lair. The steeples are his atrophied limbs, and the stained-glass windows his eyes… they mysteriously appear differently depending on whether one is inside or outside the Demon's body. Methodical and unchanging, his tactics are unique among his siblings: only taking on his first stage to move from one location to another, Jovanni inhabits spaces with thriving populations and exerts a powerful psychic influence on those of weak wills or minds… never more than six to start out with. These people are drawn into his Lair, Branded, and given the horrific Rites of Conversion, in which they are wrapped in blood red robes and transformed into his Spawn. As long as the Spawn retain somewhat human-looking forms, they then leave the Lair and seek out other followers, posing as harmless monks unless directed otherwise.

Continued exposure to Jovanni's presence after the Rites of Coversion results in the Spawn's slow, torturous transformation into a monstrous form. Limbs lengthen and enlarge, eyes become blind and eventually atrophy altogether, muscles wither and disappear, and all the while the human victim's loyalty to Jovanni grows. When at last the poor creature is too warped and deformed to pose as a human, they willingly undergo the Rite of Purification and allow themselves to be incinerated in the Sixth's white-hot breath.


	7. Duilio, the Seventh

**Duilio, the Seventh**

The Demon of Violence, with a cruel nature. Duilio was born from the soul of a notorious serial killer who removed the skins of his victims and created grisly works of art with them. One of his intended victims broke free and killed him with one of his own tools. His bloodlust from his former life not only persists into the Demon's form, but if anything it is amplified. Perhaps the most unpredictable of the Nine, nothing can control Duilio for long.

This Demon's second stage is truly monstrous; it resembles an enormous skinned minotaur. Its head is a bull's skull connected to its neck by tendons, its eyes are powerful searchlights that shine from its empty sockets. One of its arms is raw flesh, muscle, and sinew, the other is withered and skeletal. Its chest is constantly changing shape; it is woven together from the flayed corpses of its many victims. As the bodies rot and decay, it seeks out more to replace them.

Flesh, bone, and blood are the predominant features of Duilio's Lair. What appear to be gigantic ribs jut up from the muscle tissue that composes the ground, and at the Lair's center is an immense lake of blood… it is unknown if all this is made from his victims as well.

Duilio's Spawn hate and fear their master's violent rages, so when he awakens they often escape in flocks to the human world, posing as crows. Within the Lair their true forms are revealed: they are headless winged beasts, with their chests cracked open into horrible fanged mouths.

Arguably Duilio's most frightening aspect is his near-total invulnerability. Since his very being is derived from violence, pain, and hatred, any harm inflicted upon him is healed almost instantly, any weapon used against him is ineffective. Perhaps only by _not_ fighting against him can one hope to defeat him.


	8. Desideria, the Second

**Desideria, the Second**

The Demon of Lust, with a cunning nature. Possibly the oldest of the Nine, and the only one identifying as explicitly female, Desideria was born of the soul of a geisha from the Pontochō district. The most beautiful and sought-after of her _okiya_, the geisha caused a local scandal when she retired at a young age to marry a commoner she had fallen in love with. Their romance did not last; the exact circumstances of their parting were unknown. It is suggested that the commoner was unfaithful to his new bride, or perhaps that he took gravely ill… all that is known is that he died suddenly mere months later. Distraught, the geisha attempted to return to her _okiya_, but by then her name and status were sullied and blacklisted by her peers. With nowhere left to turn, the geisha lived out the rest of her youthful days as a whore, and was cursed with a long, lonely, bitter life for many years afterward once her beauty had faded.

Desideria is a shapeshifter, able to take the form and memories of any she touches. She prefers to remain in human disguise rather than take on her second stage, a hideous catlike creature made of eyes and tongues. (It is suggested that she hates this form, and only uses when in dire need.) Due to her age and her vast store of accumulated human memories, she is by far the most intelligent of the Nine, and without doubt the most devious. Desideria takes sadistic delight in tormenting her victims, using their own worst memories against them and taking on their forms to feed once their Heart is drained. For all her skill at torment and trickery, however, her fighting skills are very weak; when in danger, she will retreat and hide away rather than stand her ground.

Her Lair is a vast and intricate cage of mirrors that form a constantly-shifting maze. The reflections in the glass are her Spawn, which possess an unusual property: they can be summoned to reflective surfaces in the real world, which allow Desideria to transport herself and others from place to place. Even a small shard of glass is enough for her to make a jump across kilometers in an instant. Despite this useful ability, she is rarely seen interacting with her Spawn, and mostly prefers to summon and use them to her own ends rather than let them act on their own.


	9. Giustino, the Eighth

**Giustino, the Eighth**

The Demon of Fraud, he has a calm nature. It is thought that he was born from the soul of a man who was beloved and well-respected by his community, who cleverly hid all evidence of his misdoings and crimes until long after his death. As in his mortal life, his machinations are almost always subtle and understated, his words always carefully chosen. In some ways, he is a twin of the Second, given his personality, his typical style of attack, and the ever-shifting properties of his Spawn and his Lair.

This Demon always speaks with a deep, soothing voice, the better to lure in his victims. The form of his second stage is the head and neck of an enormous black snake with golden fangs, which sprouts from the dead soil of his Lair like a tree. The snake at first appears to have no eyes; this is an illusion. His eyes are in fact the dozens of spheres attached to the "branches", actually his bones, which jut at random angles from his neck. All the eyes are gold and slitted, and have a full three-hundred-sixty degree range of rotation, giving Giustino excellent vision. Those that stare at the eyes for too long may fall victim to a form of hypnotic suggestion.

As stated above, Giustino prefers to do his evil work from the shadows, but while he is more likely to coerce and manipulate rather than fight directly, one should not underestimate him in direct combat. His powerful roots can burrow through the soil and reach any part of his Lair within moments. Capable of ensnaring or skewering victims, disgorging his Spawn, or applying Brands, the last of these abilities is particularly frightening. Branded victims grow reptilian scales from their skin and lose all control of their bodies. As the Demon savors their fear and confusion, he forces the Branded seek out more victims and attack them savagely. Whoever is injured or bitten by one of these Branded becomes Branded themselves, while the attacker swiftly returns to normal, horrified for their actions.

Giustino's Lair is the most complex of the Nine. In its "default" state, it seems rather ordinary: a series of ten concentric, circular ditches of ever-increasing depth under a black, starless sky. As one approaches the center, or encounters Giustino's Spawn, the entire Lair begins to change around them, the only constants being the ditches and their depths. The rest changes seemingly at random: one moment it might be a ruined city, the next a stagnant swamp, and the next an arid desert.

Of particular note are Giustino's Spawn. They have no set form; they are birthed from the Demon's roots and given shape by the memories of those who trespass into his Lair, appearing as the closest friends and loved ones of their victims, complete with accurate facsimiles of their personalities. Even if the victim knows that these apparitions are not real, the act of fighting those closest to them can cause anguish and suffering, and in some cases drive them to insanity. This makes them easy prey.


	10. Lucio, the Ninth

**Lucio, the Ninth**

"_Everyone and everything is alone. Being alone is everything. All will come to ruin, and the stars above will fall."_

The Demon of Treachery, with a paranoid nature. His human origins are unknown. The _de facto_ leader of the Nine, Lucio is a being of boundless strength and cruelty. Never one to speak an unnecessary word, his speech is curt and without emotion, his personality blunt and isolated.

Lucio's second stage is unusually beautiful and alluring, despite its monstrous shape. The upper body and torso of a four-armed, winged figure that might be angelic or demonic, or rather some mixture of the two, he looks as if he was flawlessly carved from ice as smooth as glass. His vast wings are composed of ice crystals in ever-shifting, incomprehensible shapes… or perhaps these shapes might be examples of multi-dimensional geometry that are simply unfathomable to human eyes. His head is an oddly human skull with three faces... it is thought that only the most unfortunate of his victims meet their ends in one of his three hungry mouths.

His Lair is a vast well, eternally locked in bitterest winter. An icy waterfall leads downward to a bottomless frozen lake, in which are entombed his countless victims. Being sealed within the lake's ice and fed on by the Demon causes everything but the victims' faces to wither and decay; their faces are always turned upward toward the light and warmth that they will never reach again. Despite the horrors visited upon their bodies, there is evidence that these poor souls might still be alive and conscious. The outside of the Lair is arguably as dangerous as the inside; Lucio can spread the miasma created by the Lair's presence over vast distances, and take control of hundreds of Branded humans at once.

Lucio's Spawn are never utilized. Despite their enormous size, and possibly having intelligence on par with the others of the Nine, these giant creatures remain forever shackled to the walls of the well, barely able to move.

Simply put, Lucio trusts no one. Not his brethren of the Nine, not Vittoria, not his own Spawn or the Branded under his absolute control, no one. The Demon of Treachery considers himself and all other living creatures to be completely alone in the universe, without any possibility of even the concept of change. The Demon of Treachery ironically expects treachery from everyone, so his is an eternally solitary existence.


End file.
